Right Thinking from the Left Coast

Gassed Out

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about how awesome natural gas is as a source of energy. That doesn’t mean I’m fine with stuff like this:

In August 2011, the City Council of Boulder, Colorado, referred two ballot measures to voters. One authorized the city to take over (or “municipalize”) the privately owned utility that provides Boulder’s electricity. The second measure imposed a modest tax on ratepayers to finance the takeover and convert the utility from coal to natural gas.

The initiative passed. Amazingly, the Spectator portrays this as a good thing: that the citizens of Boulder, in the face of an “astroturf” campaign of a company trying to defend their interests, deprived their fellows citizens of their property rights (this isn’t an eminent domain issue; energy is a “public use”). Boulder is also pushing to go 90% renewable. We’ll see how that goes. Forbes warned a month ago that such efforts often massively underestimate the cost and technical problems connected with such municipalization schemes. You can’t just wave a magic wand and cause renewable energy to appear because you want it to.

We may see more of this in the future as the Left becomes more frustrated with their inability to foist “green” energy on us. And, of course, they’ll find some other industry to blame when these schemes completely fail.

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I lived in and around Boulder for 5 years. Not for nothing is it referred to as “The People’s Soviet Socialist Republic of Boulder” by everyone in the state. UC Boulder is a far-left university, and the town is populated by former hippies, lawyers, bike nazis and self-admitted Marxists. Everything in the town is regulated to death, which is why all the businesses are several miles away in Longmont, Broomfield, Loveland, Fort Collins, Greeley, etc, where the cost of living is half and all the year’s building permits aren’t gobbled up by noon on Jan 2nd.

People in Boulder consider it to be the center of the universe. The rest of the state despises the residents and avoid the place at all costs.

Also, that coal plant might well be that super-clean facility north of there that burns coal so efficiently that when you look at the stacks you think the place is shut down because NOTHING IS COMING OUT. Of course, to envirotards there is no such thing as clean coal.

Also, coal is really fucking cheap in Colorado. Don’t know about natural gas, but I suspect that there isn’t a pipeline going directly to the facility, while there is a rail line for the coal thats lead directly to the generating plant.

Also, that coal plant might well be that super-clean facility north of there that burns coal so efficiently that when you look at the stacks you think the place is shut down because NOTHING IS COMING OUT. Of course, to envirotards there is no such thing as clean coal.

In their eyes, CO2 is on equal footing as lead, mercury, arsenic, and trace radioactive elements.